1780 – The Official Blog of Transylvania University

1780 | The Official Blog of Transylvania University

Third & Broadway

Published alumni find inspiration in liberal arts background

Posted on by John Friedlein

The following feature article appears in the Spring/Summer 2019 issue of Third + Broadway magazine. Billy Reed’s path seemed clear right out of high school. The future Hall of Fame sports writer already was covering games for two daily newspapers, and he had a journalism scholarship in hand to the University of Kentucky. Reed instead chose Transylvania University, which didn’t even offer a journalism class at the time. The reason was pretty trivial: It would have been a hassle for him to drive across town from work to UK, not to mention find a place to park. But the impact of his broad-based Transy education was anything but trivial. Being so busy, Reed wasn’t exactly a great student. But the breadth of what he learned helped him become a great writer. “I did learn a little bit about a lot of things,” says the 1966 graduate. That’s the result of Transylvania being steeped in the liberal arts tradition, which forces students out of well-worn ruts, helping them make unexpected connections between far-flung subjects. It also develops the whole person through a range of enriching activities — from mentorships to cultivation of self-expression and discovery. “I became a big believer in the liberal arts,” Reed says. In fact, one of this courtside scribe’s favorite classes at Transy was Philosophy, Religion and Life. “If you read good sports writers, they will have various allusions — literary allusions, historical allusions,” he says. “It’s because

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Moving the field forward: the role of writing in science at Transylvania

Posted on by Robin Hicks

The following feature article appears in the Spring/Summer 2019 issue of Third + Broadway magazine, scheduled for delivery in June. Mark Sirianno ’19 remembers his eureka moment. Alone in the lab one evening, a few years into his work with Associate Professor of Biology Paul Duffin, he opened the incubator and found that the Neisseria sicca bacteria, which scientists heretofore had deemed immutable, had, in fact, transformed. They had, Sirianno explains, “taken up DNA from their environment and incorporated it into their genome.”  In a world in which Neisseria gonorrhoeae is becoming resistant to antibiotics, portending catastrophic epidemics, any new light on Neisseria bacteria could be helpful — particularly, as Sirianno notes, when 75% of the human population carries non-pathogenic Neisseria in their nasopharynx (the cavity behind the nose). “Every time you take antibiotics,” Sirianno explains, “it makes those Neisseria (in the nasopharynx) antibiotic resistant. If they can exchange DNA with the pathogenic version, it’s no wonder gonorrhoeae is becoming resistant so quickly and so efficiently.” Sirianno is helping to prove that Duffin’s thesis is correct, that this nonpathogenic strain is subject to “inter-species genetic transfer.” Yet who would know about the discovery or the broader implications if the researchers failed to write up their work clearly and concisely, and, ultimately, craft an abstract compelling enough to be accepted for presentation at a conference among peers? “The process of science isn’t done until you’ve communicated it,” says Sarah Bray, professor of

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